Back to school brings a strange mix of feelings — relief, sadness, a bit of chaos, and for almost every parent, a fresh wave of mum guilt. In this episode of M’s the Word, Sarah, Gemma, Shelley and Jade sat down for one of their most honest chats yet, talking about where mum guilt actually shows up, the part of September that stresses them out most, whether the guilt of working ever really fades, and the real (sometimes ridiculous) hacks that get them through the school run.
Spoiler: there are unread newsletters, backdated reading diaries, and at least one pillow note system that might just change your evenings.
Here’s what came up.
Where mum guilt shows up the most.
For some of the panel, it hits hardest while working, that push-pull of loving the job but missing the kids. For others, it’s less about working and more about the small stuff: not knowing which day is PE, missing a school email, or realising they’ve relied on the class WhatsApp group to know what’s actually going on. A few admitted they’ve stopped reading school newsletters altogether, years ago, in one case, and have made peace with it.
The most stressful part of back-to-school. Everyone agreed there’s a “new me, new routines” energy every September — new lunchboxes, new water bottles, big promises to be more organised. It rarely survives past the first week. The real stress, though, is the admin: juggling six different school apps between two schools and not knowing which one you’re even meant to be checking.
Does mum guilt ever really go away when you’re working? Not entirely, but it shifts. Several of the panel said the guilt is worse in the school holidays than during term time, because term time guilt gets absorbed into routine, while holiday guilt feels like carrying a child’s whole happiness in your hands. Others said they’ve made peace with working by focusing on whether their kids are happy and healthy, and by treating work as meaningful rather than just functional, a way of modelling what a balanced, fulfilled adult looks like, not just being a mum.
The practical mum hacks that actually work:
- Get dressed before breakfast — food is the motivation, not the clock
- No screen time until shoes, coats and bags are on — game time becomes the reward, not the fight
- Ditch the school newsletter guilt — if you’re not reading it, you’re not alone
- Backdate the reading diary on a Friday rather than stressing over it daily
- Use after-school clubs or extended nursery hours to buy back sanity, not just childcare
- Walk to school instead of driving, even for a mile — it’s often barely slower and becomes the best bonding moment of the day
- “Pillow notes” — a way for kids to write down big feelings or worries at bedtime that get answered later, instead of turning into a stalling tactic
- A morning gratitude ritual at the door — quick, silly, and resets the mood before the day starts
The overarching message: you’re allowed to feel all of it, relief, guilt, excitement, overwhelm, without it meaning you’re doing anything wrong. You can love your kids deeply and still need your own space. You can work full-time and still be present. And you’re allowed to just… not read the newsletter.
Full Episode Transcript
Welcome back to M’s the Word, the show where we talk about money, mortgages, and everything in between. Today’s episode feels very timely because we’re talking mum hacks and mum guilt. The kids are back to school, routines are shifting again, and for a lot of us there’s a mix of emotions — relief, pressure, sadness, maybe happiness, and for many, a little bit of guilt creeping in at this time of year. So we’re going to talk about where it shows up, why we feel it, and how we actually manage it. Alongside that, we’re hoping to share some real-life mum hacks — things that genuinely make life easier when the kids go back to school and you want to refresh your routine.
So ladies, mum guilt is one of those things almost every parent is guaranteed to feel, but we don’t always say it out loud. When does it show up most for you?
“When I’m working. Every moment I work, I feel guilty.”
“Oh, do you? I love my job, don’t worry.”
“Yeah, I do love it. But every time I work, because I’m not with my kids — though working fills my cup. It’s a push-pull thing.”
“That feels so uncomfortable.”
“So uncomfortable. I just eat cake, that helps. Mum guilt is like — no one talks about it before you have kids. It’s all ‘oh it’s lovely,’ and no one tells you it doesn’t leave. There’s nothing you can do.”
“You’re guilty when you’re with them too, wondering if you’re doing the right thing. Have they had a vegetable today? My kids ended the six weeks living on chocolate for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Survival mode.”
“The best time of their life.”
“They love it. I feel rubbish, but they love it.”
“When I first had a child, I joked that in the little bounty bag they give you free samples in, they’d also packed in a load of guilt you can use freely. But I’ve done enough work on myself that I don’t genuinely feel guilty much when it comes to the kids. The only time it creeps in is if I’m on my phone too much around them and not being present — even if I’m ‘working.’ When I’m not present, that’s when I make a change. I don’t feel guilty about holiday clubs, or having time with them, or working, because that balance is our life. When I’m with them, I try to actually be with them, and when I’m not, I don’t miss them — I have a lovely time doing what I’m doing. It’s when that balance isn’t there that the guilt comes in.”
“I feel guilty because I get things wrong a lot. I’m the one who never really knows what’s going on — very reliant on the class WhatsApp chats. All the mums guiding me. I wouldn’t even know when PE was otherwise. I make these mum mistakes, especially in September because everything’s new. And then the school likes to stir it up — ‘it’s been on a Tuesday but now it’s Thursday for three weeks,’ or ‘wear a special jumper on Wednesday.’ I feel guilty about not knowing, and honestly, about not caring enough to know.”
“If you cared, you’d know.”
“It’s not that it’s beyond you, it’s just — this is hard.”
“There’s a mum in one of my classes who said every Friday she sits down, opens all the school emails, has a glass of wine, and sorts her calendar out. Amazing. I can get behind that. Meanwhile I haven’t read a school newsletter in four years. I used to skim to the awards section just to check if my kid had won something so I could say congratulations. I don’t even do that now — I rely on people telling me.”
“Ever since you told me that, I feel so good reading the news now — like I’m one step ahead.”
“It’s not that I don’t care — I’m sure the school is doing amazing things and I wish I had the capacity to read it, but by the end of the day I’ve read so many documents I’m just overloaded. If they put it in a video I’d probably watch it, but a letter — I just can’t read another thing.”
“I feel like once they’re at school, I’ve done my bit — leave me alone, I’ve got other things to do. Then when I pick them up, someone in the WhatsApp group tells me the key points. I do try to engage, but when they tell me they learned about the Saxons, I think — I’m sorry, I love that you taught my child that, but I don’t need re-teaching something I’ve never used since school. Which is exactly why we want financial education taught in schools.”
“It’s tricky, isn’t it. We’re lucky to have the education system we have — there are children in other countries who don’t even get to go to school. I’m grateful for it, and grateful for the help it gives me, even when I get it wrong. I’m trying my best.”
“And while we’re admitting things — the reading diary. We’ll do the reading, then by Friday I realise I haven’t written it in, so I backdate from Monday and do a mass entry. We did five reads, I swear we did.”
“Just normalising your behaviour.”
“Sometimes I put them a few pages ahead of where they actually are. My son said, ‘I’ve only read to page 89,’ and I said, ‘you’d better catch up.’ I don’t believe in homework, if I’m honest — that’s actually something my own mum used to say. You spend seven or eight hours at school, you don’t need to come home and do more. She never went to parents’ evenings either. I turned out very self-disciplined; my brother, less so, but he’s doing great too, so maybe it didn’t matter either way.”
“With my son’s spellings, I ask how he’s doing and he says ‘good,’ and when I ask how many he got right he says ‘usually nine or ten.’ So we are reading — it’s my admin that isn’t up to scratch.”
“I’m getting a twang of mum guilt hearing this. I actually stopped doing the reading diary altogether. My husband used to prompt it, and when we started getting divorced it just became one more thing on the list I couldn’t take. It’s such a small thing, but I did it again today and it felt amazing. I told the teacher I’d missed parents’ evening because I hadn’t read the newsletter, and they just booked me in separately — no one died.”
“That’s a hack, honestly.”
“I feel mum guilt most in the mornings — I’ll be getting ready with four minutes to go, still doing my protein shake, refusing to let anything be cut, just squeezing everything in faster and making everyone bump the pace. I’m the mum who runs to school most of the week — ‘come on, let’s beat our last time.’ But on a bad day I make it everyone else’s problem — ‘why are we always late, every single day’ — when really they were ready with their bags and shoes on and it was me.”
“We underestimate that gap between being ‘ready’ and actually getting in the car. I’ve had times where we’ve been ready for forty minutes and somehow still left late. Those last few minutes always take longer than you think.”
“It does add a bit of excitement to the day when we see each other at school and go ‘nailed it’ or ‘we’re early’ — ‘what are you doing here?’ The other day I made it on time because I had an important meeting, so I know I can do it. I should probably feel guilty that it’s not every day, but I don’t.”
“I hate the bit where I pick up my youngest — she’s gritty and tired, and then I have to carry a tantruming toddler while collecting my eldest too. So I increased her nursery hours to avoid that pickup altogether. It means my eldest gets a couple of minutes where I can actually be present, rather than being on the phone dealing with a meltdown. I do feel a bit bad she’s there an extra half hour, but my sanity matters too, and it takes the stress out of the relationship.”
“I do something similar with after-school club. I work from home but still need to work, and I don’t love the standard pickup — you can’t get a parking space, it turns into an hour if you drive, you might as well walk. So I put them in after-school club for an hour and pick them up in ten minutes instead. It’s taken a lot of stress out of the day.”
So — what part of back to school do you find most stressful?
“Completely. Every September I think, ‘this is going to be different, I’m going to be so much better’ — read all the emails, be the one who tells everyone else what’s going on in the WhatsApp group.”
“It probably stems from when we were at school ourselves — everything new and fresh, writing the date really neatly on the first day. We’re conditioned to feel that way. Sticky-back plastic on the books, all of it.”
“I love September, the season changing, all of it. What I hate is having six apps between two schools and constantly fighting with my phone about screen time, not even knowing which app I’m meant to be checking.”
“Isn’t it so good when you get to close them all down for summer?”
“I went into the school office recently and said, ‘you’re going to have to help me,’ and asked them to talk me through it like I know nothing.”
“Do you feel pressured to get it right? I think there’s a version of ourselves we imagine every September — how long does that version usually last?”
“Three days. I want mine to last until Christmas this year at least.”
“I get the hump within the first week — someone messaging about dressing up for something. I’m only two years into school life, I still don’t know all the ‘days.’ There’s always something to celebrate that I didn’t know about.”
“A friend of mine said in an interview that she doesn’t care about going for coffee with the other mums, doesn’t care about being seen as a ‘good school mum’ — she won’t miss what matters to her kids, but the rest of it, she doesn’t care about. And saying that out loud apparently frees you from so much of the burden. It triggered me a bit, but maybe because it’s true.”
You said earlier you feel guilty every time you work — do you think that guilt ever fully disappears once you’re working?
“I do enjoy working, but I get stuck in a bit of a pit at the start of September — completely maxed out from the school holidays, and then when the kids go back there’s relief, but also this sense of ‘who even am I, what do I do now?’ It takes time to get back into it — a bit like after Christmas too. I’ve started gifting myself a half day in bed that first week back.”
“That should be normalised. They rarely go back on a Monday anyway — it’s usually a Tuesday or Wednesday. So maybe that first week is for restoring, before really kicking into the next quarter.”
“I don’t reframe it, really. When they’re at school it’s easier not to feel guilty, because they have to be there anyway. The summer holiday guilt is far more brutal — I feel like I’ve got their whole childhood in my hands and need to make six weeks magical. I am quite rigid about bedtime though, whatever time of year it is — partly because I need that time back for myself. My first six weeks alone on maternity leave taught me that the hard way.”
“I resonate with that too — the first week of September I don’t even know my own name. I need a minute, then I kick back into it properly around October. September means Christmas planning to me, which helps.”
“I just look at my kids and ask — are they happy, are they healthy? They’re thriving at school, enjoying their hobbies, getting plenty of time with me, their dad and their grandparents. We’re fortunate, so I struggle to find what I’d actually feel guilty about.”
“I got asked recently how I manage that, having built a business for mums while knowing full well I’d feel mum guilt too. For me, any time away from my children needs to mean I’m making a difference somewhere — to myself, to someone else. If the work feels meaningful, I’m okay with it. That’s actually why I left my old job as a PA in London — it might have been meaningful to the people I worked for, but it wasn’t meaningful enough to justify being away from my baby. If you can find work that feels meaningful, you’re not just spending time away from your kids, you’re investing it somewhere that can also make things better for the world they’ll grow up in.”
“There’s something about being a role model too — if you’re endlessly available with no boundaries, what does that actually teach them about adulting? Our children live privileged lives compared to children elsewhere, and they should understand that the nice things come from the fact that we work.”
“I think we get confused thinking we’re just raising children, when actually we’re raising future adults. They should see that balance modelled — in my house, I bring in income that’s needed, same as my husband. I’m not working just for fun, though I enjoy it, and I think that’s a good thing for them to see. I have asked myself, would I want to be a stay-at-home mum? And honestly, I don’t think they’d get the best version of me — I’d stay busy in other ways anyway, just less paid, and probably a bit frustrated. That’s just my personality — for other people, staying home is absolutely the right fit.”
“I actually think I’d love being a stay-at-home mum, which might surprise people given how ambitious I am. But I never got the chance to try it — this business was partly built to be the next best thing, working from home on my own terms. My eldest is nearly thirteen now, and I can feel her pulling away, no longer needing me at the centre of her world — she’s got friends, school, cheerleading. If my whole identity had been built around being needed by her, I’d be struggling badly right now. It’s such a hard, unspoken part of this — no one talks about it. I’m actually curious to talk to friends who don’t work, to hear this from a completely different angle — every path has its own version of guilt, whether you stay home or work.”
“My own mum says that about me and my brother — we were her whole world, and when we both left home she says it nearly broke her. She’s very open that she doesn’t want to be anything other than our mum, even now. It’s hardest, I think, for her.”
So — do we have any actual hacks to leave people with?
“No fights in the morning if my son gets dressed before he’s fed. If I feed him first and then ask him to get dressed, it’s a battle — not about time, he’s got plenty, he just has no motivation. He’s led by food, so uniform first, breakfast after, and it happens really quickly. At breakfast club he can be ready in five minutes flat because he knows three breakfasts are waiting.”
“There’s nothing worse than realising you rushed out the door and their toothbrush is still bone dry.”
“Mine want gaming time before school now, which I used to ban completely. Now it’s ‘no gaming until you’re 100% ready’ — breakfast, teeth, hair, shoes, coats, everything. They’ll rush through it all just to get their ten minutes, sitting on the sofa fully dressed with their bags on, sometimes a full hour early. It’s not exactly what I pictured, but it works — a carrot, whatever form it takes, whether food or screen time.”
Anything you’ve stopped doing that’s made life feel lighter?
“Stopped reading the newsletters, completely.”
“My eldest went back to wanting packed lunches after we’d finally got off them — she asked for a year, I said no, eventually caved. Trying to find something healthy, chocolatey, apple-based and allergy-safe is its own nightmare, so I’ve handed that job to my partner entirely.”
“Something I want to bring back is a gratitude moment at the door before school — standing there saying ‘I’m pretty, I’m smart,’ all of it, sometimes turned into a little song and dance. It resets the energy before walking out. My youngest has started doing it herself now, bless her — ‘I’ll be kind, I’ll look after people’ — a nice little reset before we go.”
“Mine’s a slightly unusual one. My kids have never been great at bedtime — every ailment and big feeling seems to surface right before lights out. ‘My ankle hurts, I think I need a doctor,’ or ‘I’ve got some really big feelings.’ Apparently there’s an actual reason children soften and open up right at bedtime, so instead of losing patience, we started ‘pillow notes’ — if they’ve got something they’d usually save for a stalling tactic at bedtime, they can write it down, leave it under a pillow, and I’ll write back or we’ll talk about it properly. It’s amazing how much they lean into it. It takes the manipulation element out of it, because otherwise it just turns into frustration every night — but it can actually be really meaningful.”
“That’s a hack.”
“Mine is just walking to school. We live a mile away — driving would only save about ten minutes overall — and it’s so much better for bonding, for health, for getting outside. We walk every day unless it’s absolutely pouring, and even though they moan sometimes, it ends up being some of our most special time together.”
There’s something really important in giving ourselves permission — permission not to feel guilt, permission to feel all the things that come with parenting: relief, excitement that they’re back at school, and permission not to get it right all the time. You can be a great parent and still feel overwhelmed. You can love your children deeply and still need your own space.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of M’s the Word — we’ll see you next time.
